News Xchange 2008, the annual international broadcast news conference, starts this morning in Valencia, Spain, to look over a year in the broadcast industry.

The conference kicked off with a review of the year in pictures supplied by the Associated Press before Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News, read a memorial to those journalists who died reporting the news in the last 12 months before a horrifically long list of names of the fallen is shown on the video screens, at least 20 killed reporting the story in Iraq.

So what can we expect this year? Notables appearances will include: Adrian Wells, head of foreign news for Sky News talking about the Olympic afterglow, Dorothy Byrne, head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, talking about reporting on Islam, presentation of the Mohamed Amin Award, Guardian contributor Jeff Jarvis on making and selling digital news, Will Hutton, founder of the Work Foundation talking about global finance and sessions on the coverage of the race for the White House, reporting entertainment stories and many, many more.